Now, before anyone claims that I'm "wrong" about the paid number being 7.3 million instead of 8.07 million, read the tweet carefully: I says that 7.3 million were enrolled as of August 15th. In other words, that's the net number after subtracting those who've dropped their coverage after 1, 2, 3 or more months.
In a new 60-second ad, Kentucky Senate candidate Alison Lundegran Grimes finally goes after opponent Mitch McConnell regarding his repeated attempts to damage/weaken Medicare. It isn't really connected to the Kynect = Obamacare = ACA issue, but it's in the ballpark, anyway:
The ad seems to have gotten under the skin of the McConnell campaign; they're actually attacking her grandfather for having a stroke:
.@Team_Mitch "Any1 who would use their grandfather's stroke" 2 reintroduce false ads "has run out of justification 4 their candidacy" #KYSen
A ton of great ACA news coming out of Connecticut this morning, courtesy of Arielle Levin Becker (posted in reverse-chronological order, newest at the top):
Arielle Levin Becker provides some updated numbers out of Connecticut, which is great...but I'll have to do some calculations to parse the data out for my purposes:
Current Access Health membership: 76,094 in private insurance, 207,020 in Medicaid (total Medicaid enrollment is much higher)
OK, so those are the current enrollment numbers. 76,094 QHPs is 4% net attrition from the 4/19 total of 79,192, or less than 0.8% per month, which is fantastic.
However, since that 76K figure combines both additions and subtractions (ie, it's the net total, not gross), I can't really tell what the cumulative total is, which is what I use for my off-season projection chart.
Then there's the ones who try to take credit for Medicaid expansion finally being put into effect even though it was their own ineptness which dragged the process out...in the case of Michigan, needlessly putting hundreds of thousands of people through 3 months of unnecessary anxiety and medical risk while costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds in the process:
Washington hospitals provided nearly $154 million less in charity care in the first half of this year than in the first half of 2013, in many cases boosting the hospitals’ bottom lines.
Hospitals attributed the plunge in charity care — about 30 percent — to the Affordable Care Act’s focus on reducing the number of uninsured patients.
This year, for the first time, low-income and uninsured patients whose care was previously covered under hospitals’ charity-care programs were able under the ACA to qualify for Medicaid coverage or subsidized private insurance.
Unfortunately, I don't know the market share breakdown, so I can't do a weighted average, but the DC Health Link exchange rates for 2015 have been released, and the unweighted average is only a 2.3% increase for the individual market. For the SHOP (small business) exchange the news is even better...a decrease of over 2% (again, unweighted). The SHOP rates carry a lot more heft in DC than in most states due to the unique rules in place there (like Vermont, all individual enrollment has to be done via the ACA exchange, and all Congressional staffers are required to enroll via the DC SHOP system):
The D.C. Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking today announced the approved health insurance plan rates for the District of Columbia’s health insurance marketplace, DC Health Link, for plan year 2015.
Eight carriers through four major insurance companies – Aetna, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, Kaiser Permanente and UnitedHealthcare – will have plan offerings for individuals, families and small businesses on DC Health Link when enrollment opens Nov. 15, 2014.
Ouch. While most states are seeing their list of insurance providers increasing this year, in a few cases some are dropping out...and in the case of Minnesota, it's the one with 59% of current enrollees:
The insurer with the lowest rates and most customers on Minnesota's health care exchange is pulling out.
Golden Valley-based PreferredOne this morning confirmed its exit from MNsure. It comes as a major blow to the exchange — the next open enrollment period starts Nov. 15 and runs through Feb. 15.
MNsure officials said the online insurance exchange would reach out soon to PreferredOne customers who bought coverage through MNsure last year with information on next steps.
They said consumers still have at least four, well-known, Minnesota-based carriers "who are committed to providing important health coverage" to everyone, including people who qualify for tax credits and public programs.
...According to a company statement, MNsure policies make up only a small percentage of PreferredOne's entire enrollment but take up a significant amount of resources to support.
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice – – -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
